SOURCEBOOK

Get your copy of the first ever Digital Experience Sourcebook from EContent, which is packed with information about the past, present, and future of all the topics that matter to digital content professionals.

Media Business News and Trends

Every marketer reading this wishes he or she had fans who are this engaged and evangelical. But it isn't just Murderinos who want to tell everyone about their favorite podcasts. "96% said they had recommended a podcast to a friend. Word of mouth was the primary means for podcast discovery for these respondents, with just over half saying the primary means by which they learned about new podcasts were recommendations from program hosts or friends and family," according to the Knight Foundation.

Adtaxi, a digital marketing agency, released the results of its Super Bowl Viewership and Consumer Streaming Trends Survey, an in-depth look at how consumers nationwide will be watching the Super Bowl, as well as an examination of their digital streaming habits more broadly. Although movies and television series still dominate the streaming world, there are important opportunities for digital advertisers to reach consumers while viewing major sporting events—namely through social media.

Trolls. If you spend any time at all on the internet, you've encountered one. If you're a journalist on the web--especially a female journalist--trolls are part of your daily life. If you're a publisher or brand, battling the trolls who make the comments section on your site an unbearable minefield of vitriol and personal attacks, is a nearly full-time job. Meanwhile, battling trolls while trying to develop audience engagement is a tough balancing act. EContent talked to Allison Munro, Head of Sales & Marketing at Viafoura, an audience development platform, about how to walk the fine line between encouraging engagement and discussion and letting trolls run rampant on your site.

A Purdue University-affiliated startup is designing next-generation hardware and software for deep learning aimed at enabling computers to understand the world in the same way humans do. FWDNXT, based in the Purdue Research Park, has developed a low-power mobile coprocessor called Snowflake for accelerating deep neural networks effective at image recognition and classification. Snowflake was designed with the primary goal of optimizing computational efficiency by processing multiple streams of information to mix deep learning and artificial intelligence techniques with augmented reality application.

EContent got the chance to talk with some of the digital content industry's best and brightest at the Gilbane Digital Content Conference. We asked them a series of questions in the hopes that their answers will help you be better prepared for 2018's challenges. In this installment of Voices of EContent, we asked these leaders in their fields to tell us what advice they would give content creators in 2018.

The Financial Times, in partnership with Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, a member of MUFG, will extend its free access to FT.com for all 16-19-year-old school students globally. Individual schools can register at ft.com/intlschools

The challenge we face now is one we didn't predict; digital ads may have been the future, but a finite one rather than the semi-permanent "forever" future we collectively envisioned. Now, digital publishing is facing some major hurdles when it comes to growth, and online news portals are starting to see similar declines as their printed counterparts. So what does this mean for the future of digital advertising?

The Gallup-Knight Foundation surveyed 19,196 Americans aged 18 and older, about their media habits and belief. The research, compiled in "American Views: Trust, Media and Democracy," revealed that most Americans believe it is now harder to be well informed and to determine which news is accurate. EContent had the chance to ask Sam Gill, Knight Foundation VP for Communities and Impact, a few questions about the report's findings, what they say about us, and what the media can do to build trust among audiences.

This past holiday season saw huge gains in sales and not just in retail goods. Consumers used their growing disposable income to test out new digital experiences, enabling the App Store to hit a record $300 million in sales. One digital app experience sticks out: virtual reality. VR app usage spiked over the 2017 holidays.

Skyword, a content marketing software and services company, released the results of a year-long investigation into the work of nearly 1,000 content marketers worldwide. Through an in-depth survey of marketers who had taken Skyword's Content Marketing Continuum Assessment, the research team uncovered a critical set of characteristics among the highest-performing content marketers. These provide a roadmap for marketers seeking to transform their teams for story-centric marketing.

Reuters, an international multimedia news provider, announced that customers will now have access to expanded sports content through partnerships with Field Level Media and Opta. The new content from Field Level Media and Opta add to Reuters' existing suite of global sports coverage.

As debates rage over trust in news, the power of misinformation, and the impact of social media, a new Gallup-Knight Foundation report shows that Americans believe the news media have an important role to play in our democracy - yet they don't see that role being fulfilled.

Purdue University will lead a new national center to develop brain-inspired computing for intelligent autonomous systems such as drones and personal robots capable of operating without human intervention. The Center for Brain-inspired Computing Enabling Autonomous Intelligence, or C-BRIC, is a five-year project supported by $27 million in funding from the Semiconductor Research Corp.

Ad fraud keeps making headlines with estimates of its total damages climbing. With bots evolving and rapidly multiplying, and fraudsters becoming increasingly sophisticated, advertisers are not the only ones who feel the pain. As fear and doubt whittle away ad spend, publishers and viewers are also paying a heavy price.

How much of your traffic comes from Facebook? Whatever your answer is, it's about to change. Facebook has officially announced changes to its Newsfeed algorithm that will put content from friends ahead of, well, everything else. So, whether you're a media outlet or a marketer, your social media strategy is about to get a big shake-up.

TimefireVR, Inc. announced investing in the cryptocurrency Ethereum as part of the Company's shift in corporate focus towards strategic investments in cryptocurrency and potential acquisitions of blockchain technology businesses. Ethereum is a leading blockchain platform for Decentralized Applications ("DApps") that run on a peer-to-peer network of computers instead of on one single computer or server.

The Qtum Foundation announced that it will join forces with 360 Blockchain Research Center, and the BTN Foundation to form China's first-ever blockchain technology laboratory, as part of the efforts to promote the development and commercialization of blockchain technology.

Oath, a subsidiary of Verizon introduced the first Brand Love Index, a new research study revealing key factors that drive consumers to love brands. Oath worked with Kantar Consulting, a division of Kantar, to analyze data from more than 150,000 consumers across 13 countries, to define six drivers of brand love that span industries, age, gender, and nationality, with results of what actually moves consumers.

With an unpredictable landscape and an increase in competition from the endless supply of new media companies, both digital and traditional publishers are facing unforeseen challenges when looking for new ways to engage and retain their audiences. There are a few key tactics that successful publishers are executing that other companies should consider to stay relevant: leveraging social video, gearing content to target audiences, and investing in digital to grow reach.

As "always on" audience-driven engagement further infiltrates marketing consciousness, those brands that want to create high quality content more efficiently-and strategically take into account the diverse interests of their audience-are starting in-house content studios. These operations generate a variety of content forms and types and are led by trailblazing, first-generation content leaders. In 2018 content studios will continue to flourish, but there will be some things to watch out for.

LoopMe conducted cross-Atlantic research with Censuswide to look at US and UK consumers views on their data, ahead of the GDPR implementation in May 2018. US consumers believe that their data is worth $244 per year. Despite a high price tag, many consumers feel uninformed about their data - 31% of US respondents and 51% of their UK counterparts did not feel informed enough to give a value on their data.

Organizations investing in digital transformation initiatives to drive more of their customers to their online channels are taking a far more deliberate and bottom-line approach to site redesign—and using customer data to inform, evaluate, and iteratively improve the website customer experience. Getting started on this path requires you to think very differently about site redesign and data collection. Instead of thinking of a site redesign as a one-and-done project, you should use a measurement and evaluation process that helps you continuously optimize the customer experience.

A free press is a cornerstone of any free society. Lately, it's been under attack, becoming the whipping boy of anyone looking for an easy target. Politicians and the press have an adversarial relationship, but there's usually at least some semblance of respect. The current president has a particularly contentious relationship with the press, labeling anything he doesn't like as fake news. At one point early on in the administration, he went so far as to call the press "the enemy of the people" in an angry tweet.

For all the talk about data and measurement at the Gilbane Digital Content Conference, it's not always easy to understand what to do with the numbers once you have them. Lynette Chen, MaassMedia senior consultant, tackled what it means to try and measure success at "the edge of innovation" in her session, relying on a Guardian case study.